I gulped. “What do you want me to wear?”

“It’s going to be hot. Wear as little as possible, but put on a hat. You do have a hat, don’t you?”

I didn’t. “That’s all right, I’ll give you one of mine,” Dina said. And so we went out, both in shorts and t-shirts and canvas trainers, with vaguely cloche hats on our heads. It was hot as prophesied, and the sweat was soon trickling down our faces. There were no farmhands on the place, in fact apart from the two of us there was nobody at all.

“It’s the slack season for work,” Dina said. “The planting is done, the harvesting is yet to come. That’s why Mum and Dad managed to take off a couple of weeks to visit Uncle ____________ in _____________.”

“And you really have nothing to do now?”

“Betty turns on the sprinklers twice a day for irrigation, and we’ll be shanghaied to spray insecticide if necessary.” Dina glanced at me. “You’ve been a bit silent. Did I shock you about her screwing her boyfriend? She does, you know. She says it’s natural, and that being a virgin isn’t normal or healthy once you’re finished with puberty. I probably agree.”

I tried to change the subject. “What was all that about an undiscovered diamond? Did you really say such things about me?”

“Of course I did. You underestimate yourself, Juliana.” She pointed to a low mound covered by trees. “Now there’s the lake, and a chance to cool off.”

“Lake?” I asked, but Dina just took me by the arm and drew me along. We passed the hillock and before us was a perfect little lake, its waters glittering in the sun. It was so unexpected and so beautiful that I just stopped, staring.

“Well, don’t stand there gaping,” Dina said. “Come and let’s cool off.”

We sat dipping our feet in the water, and then Dina took off her t-shirt and bra and splashed water over her torso without any embarrassment. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye and saw the drops of water glittering on her bare breasts and felt a queer thrill of excitement. This was years before I was seduced by Mila. I had not yet realised my own bisexuality, and in fact I didn’t even realise that I was sexually excited. In retrospect that was a very good thing, because otherwise I might have made advances at Dina, and that would have probably destroyed our friendship, because Dina was and still is as straight as the day is long.

“Why don’t you do that too?” she asked. “It feels great.”

Not wanting to look like I was a prude, I did the same. It was the first time I had ever been topless in the open, and though there was nobody but Dina to see, I felt myself blushing hotly. Dina was right, though. The cool water on my breasts and torso felt like heaven, especially when a tiny breeze sprang up.

“My mother loves this lake,” Dina said. “She claims she made my father buy this farm only because of it. My father claims there were far better farms for sale and he should have bought any of them, but he spends more time here than my mum does.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said. To the right there was something angular, partially hidden by a thick clump of bushes, and after looking at it for a minute I realised that it was an old rowboat of some kind. “Do you go boating here?”

“Boating?” Dina laughed. “Oh, no, that’s strictly decoration. I suppose one could have used it once, but it’s just scenery now. There are no oars and the wood is so warped and split that I think if you put it in the water it would go down like a stone.”

Curious, I got up and wandered over to get a closer look, the bottoms of my feet ticklish against the grass, the breeze on my bare breasts. The boat was indeed very old, so weathered and seasoned that the paint had long since disappeared and the wood bleached to the colour of cream and honey. Under the boards at one end (I don’t know anything about boats so I don’t know what those boards are called) I saw a green canvas bag, stuffed in as far as it would go. “Dina,” I called. “There’s a bag here.”

She came over. “Oh, that must be Betty’s boyfriend’s.”

“Who’s Betty’s boyfriend?”

“I think his name is…Harry? Yes, unless she’s changed boyfriends, it’s Harry. He’s from the town near the station. My parents tolerate him as long as they don’t have to see him, you know…” she made a vague twirling movement in the air with her hand, which made her breasts sway deliciously. “…canoodling her,” she finished. “Anyway, he must have left some of his things here. Saves him bringing them over each time he visits. Do you want to swim in the lake? It’s fun.”

“I don’t know how to swim.” I felt stupid saying it.

“Oh, I’ll teach you.”

And to her credit, she tried, that day and often afterwards, but without success. I could not concentrate on what she was telling me, because of the sensation of her hands on my breast and back as she tried to support me in the water, of the feel of her nipple squashed against my arm. And yet again, I did not really understand what I was feeling, and today I am grateful for that, because Dina is still a friend, and she so easily might no longer have been.

To this day I still cannot swim.

We returned for lunch and then went out again, and Dina showed me all around the farm. It was very large, but because of the high stalks of maize – it was planted with maize that year – it wasn’t easy to see far. “Lots of spaces to hide in,” Dina said with a grin, “if one wants to get up to mischief.”

“And do you get up to mischief?”

“Who, me? I’m the most law-abiding of young women, didn’t you know?”

It was the next day, or perhaps the one after that, that we were washing up after breakfast. Or, to be quite accurate, Dina was washing up, I was drying the washed dishes, and Betty was sitting with one foot propped up on the edge of the kitchen table, painting her toenails. Suddenly she looked up.

“Oh, right, I forgot to tell you two. Harry’s coming over today, so make yourselves scarce.”

“Oh? Where would you like us to go? Or not go?”

“Umm…you can stay in the house, or go anywhere around the farm, but stay away from the lake. I rather think we’ll be at the lake.”

Dina glanced over at Betty, who was dressed in almost nothing. Well, I exaggerate, she had on a big, loose t-shirt, and a pair of tiny shorts, but was very obviously not wearing a bra and probably nothing under the shorts either. “I see you’re all ready to go swimming,” she said drily. “That’s what you’re going to do, right?”

“That’s right,” Betty agreed. “And I rather prefer not to share my swimming with anyone except Harry, so stay out of the water, will you? I’ll give you a picnic lunch so you don’t bother me.”

As soon as we were done with the washing up, Dina clutched me by the arm and dragged me up to her room. “Get ready,” she whispered. “We’ll go out right away.”

“Go where?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” From a cupboard, she fetched out a box. Inside there were two small telescopes, bound in brass and leather. “Put these in your bag, quick.”

“What…?” I began, but Dina hissed with impatience. “We’re going bird-watching. Now put it in your bag.”

I put it in my bag, because when Dina was in one of those moods it was pointless asking her anything. We went back down to the kitchen, where Betty handed us a large packet, sloppily wrapped in newspaper with food stains on it.

“I went to some trouble to make sure it looked as good as something out of a gourmet restaurant,” she told us straight-faced, while scratching the dogs behind their ears. “Now get out and don’t you dare show your faces till evening.”

“Have fun,” Dina said. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do….if I were you.” Betty made as though to throw something at her, and, laughing, she ducked and ran out of the door. Still totally puzzled, I followed.

“Look here,” I said as soon as I had caught up with Dina, which took a while, because though my legs were much longer she was almost flying. “Wait, what’s the hurry?”

She didn’t pause to turn towards me, just threw the words back over her shoulder. “We have to hurry, you nit. Before they get there!”

“Who gets there? Where? Who are they? The birds?” I was panting by now. “Are we really going to watch birds?”

She didn’t say anything, just put on an extra burst of speed. I saw with surprise that we were approaching the hillock by the lake, where Betty had told us specifically not to go. However, instead of skirting the hillock, Dina scrambled right up it, to one of the trees at the top. It was a very large and very leafy tree, with broad branches splitting off quite close to the ground. Dina dropped her bag and began unlacing her trainers.

“Take off your shoes and socks and put them in your bag. Don’t argue, just do it. Quickly!”

Finally surrendering to the craziness going on around me, I did as ordered. Picking up her bag, Dina began climbing the tree, her long, prehensile toes gripping notches and ridges in the bark. From one of the lower branches, she gestured to me impatiently to climb as well, so I did. And as I got to her she motioned me to climb higher, and pulled the leaves I’d pushed through back again.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Climb! Save your questions for later.”

I am no tree climber under ordinary circumstances, but this was really a very easy tree to climb, the branches broad and flat, even towards the top. It was rather like climbing a broad, leafy ladder. Finally I found myself high up near the top, and Dina, just behind me, pointed to a branch. “There, get on that one.”

I did. The branch was short, broken off only a couple of metres from the trunk, but very broad, almost like a bench. And when I had sat down with my back to the trunk, I found that there was another, narrower branch at just the right level to hold on to.

“Made it,” Betty said, and flopped down beside me, feet dangling. “One moment.” Reaching out, she broke off some leafy twigs, and suddenly we had a clear view down to the shore of the lake and the old boat.

I stared at her. “Now suppose you tell me what the hell this is about?”

“You’ll see in a minute.” Reaching for my bag, which was still on my back, she fished out the box with the two small telescopes. I noticed that, unlike me, she made no effort to anchor herself to the other branch, as though she was used to coming up here. I was about to say something about it, but she raised a hand. “Ah, here they are.”

“Who…” I began, but then caught a murmur of voices, and Dina put a finger emphatically to her lips. A moment later, bushes stirred by the lake shore and Betty and a young man emerged. Betty was dressed as we’d seen her earlier, in the long T shirt and the tiny shorts, her feet bare as usual. The young man was thin, short haired and clean shaven, and had on a T shirt and blue jeans. They walked towards the boat, pausing almost directly under us to kiss. If they had looked up they might have seen our dangling legs and feet, but they were too busy kissing. Betty twisted in the boy’s arms so she was standing with her back to his chest, her head turned over her shoulder so she didn’t break the kiss. His hands cupped her breasts over her t-shirt, then crawled down over her stomach, slipped under the cloth and back up again. I caught a glimpse of her pale stomach and dimpled navel. She arched her torso, pushing her chest against his cupping hands, obviously pressing her nipples against his palms.

“Dina,” I whispered urgently, “we need to go.”

“Don’t be silly,” she whispered back. “That’s why I brought you up here. Watch now.”

Finally ending the kiss, Betty took the boy – Harry, I remembered his name was – by the hand, and drew him towards the boat. They stood hugging beside it, Betty looking up into his face.

“We’re…” My mouth was dry, my heart hammering, but I hadn’t yet admitted to myself that it was with excitement. “We’re intruding.”

“No we aren’t. She wants us to watch. She just about ordered us to come here.”

I may have wanted to say something in reply, but my attention was firmly taken by what was now happening down by the boat. Harry had slid his arms inside Betty’s t-shirt again, and had pushed it up over her breasts, which he was cupping in his hands. Betty threw her head back, and he nuzzled her neck, his tongue licking up and down the line of her throat. Even from that distance I saw her shiver. For the first time I saw her nipples, stiff brown nubs with huge areolae around them. Her breasts were beautiful, too, like those on a painting, heavy but graceful, tiny arcs of shadow beneath them accentuating their curves as she raised her arms to let Harry pull the t-shirt off. Turning to him, she removed his T shirt too, tossing it into the boat, and hugged him to her. From behind I saw his hand disappear under the waistband of her shorts to clutch her buttocks.

“Right, that’s it, Harry,” Dina murmured. “Do it!” I saw her raise her telescope to her eye. I did likewise, but at first saw only a blur. Luckily, almost immediately, I found that twisting the eyepiece adjusted it and brought it into sharp focus. I found myself looking at a bush beyond the boat, and had to sweep it back to Betty and Harry, afraid that I’d missed Harry’s next move.

It wasn’t Harry who’d made the next move, though, it was Betty, and I was just in time to see it. Pushing Harry down to the ground beside the boat, she straddled him, facing us, her heavy breasts swinging as she undid his belt and pulled his trousers down to his ankles. His socks and trainers gave her a moment’s trouble, and then she dragged them off his feet without undoing the laces. A moment later, his trousers lay in a crumpled heap on top of his t-shirt, and Betty’s hands – her fingernails flashing red with the polish she’d applied at the breakfast table – tugged at his Y-fronts, slipping them down over his thighs and off. His penis, like something trapped and then released, sprung free.

I heard Dina sigh. I may have sighed myself. It was the first time I had ever seen an adult penis, let alone one erect. It stuck up like a little mast above the crumpled sack of his scrotum, brown and ribbed with veins, topped by a glans purplish pink with engorged blood. I had a sudden desire to feel it sliding into my vagina, it opening up like a sheath to accommodate it, feeling the throbbing warmth of it inside me.

I didn’t have more than a few seconds to look at it before Betty, throwing away Harry’s underwear, lowered her mouth to his penis. Through the telescope I could see her lips slide down over his erection, and how his knees rose to buck his hips so that he pushed his penis into her mouth, and how she took it in until his tuft of pubic hair touched her chin. And her mouth slid up again, his penis – wet and glittering with her saliva, emerging almost to the tip, before she took it into her mouth again. Her hair fell forward, obscuring her face and Harry’s penis. (In porno the actresses always pull their hair back to let the camera get a view of what they’re up to, but this was real life.) I lowered the telescope from my eye to glance at Dina.

Her telescope wasn’t at her eye either. She was leaning back against the trunk, her eyes half shut and mouth open. Her right hand was inside her shorts, and the way the fabric was rising and falling left no doubt in my mind as to what her fingers were doing.

I wasn’t used to sitting on the branch, so I couldn’t make myself let go of my hold on the other branch for fear of falling. With my other hand holding the telescope, I couldn’t finger my clitoris like Dina. Instead I began squeezing my thighs together tightly and rhythmically.

This is something I’d learnt quite by accident, in school, and, ironically, it was the inadvertent doing of that same D’Costa whose car Dina and I had sabotaged. One day he’d started in on me in the morning, first thing, and kept it up for hours, an endless series of insults. “Look at Juliana,” he’d announce to the class. “She’s the biggest asset this class has, because she is the perfect example of what the rest of you should not be!” And most of them would titter, because anyone who didn’t risked becoming D’Costa’s next object of attention. I’d cried through the lunch hour, with nobody to commiserate, because this was before Dina had joined the school. Then, first thing after lunch, he’d sprung a surprise mathematics test on us.

Now, I have a confession to make: being left-handed, right-brained, and not overburdened with analytical ability, I am not particularly good at mathematics. I am, in fact, extremely bad at mathematics. And that’s when I am not under pressure. At that moment, I was emotionally devastated already, and it wasn’t helped by hearing D’Costa tell the class, “I expect all of you to do better than Juliana. After all, you don’t want to be called worse than her at maths.”

The test was to be completed in an hour. After fifteen minutes, I had only completed the first problem, and I was far from certain that it was even correct. With D’Costa sitting at his desk with a smug smile on his reptilian face, and the rest of my classmates busily scribbling away, I felt a wave of panic sweeping over me, so overwhelming that I clenched my eyes and fists tight shut. My toes curled inside my shoes, and my thighs pressed together as hard as they could.

Then, suddenly, a strange feeling came over me. It began in the pit of my stomach, a feeling as though something was pulsing inside, a feeling that spread to down between my thighs, a feeling as though something was forming below my navel and between my legs, something that clenched at my muscles and drove me to squeeze my thighs together, over and over, tighter and tighter. And then…suddenly, it was as though liquid fire poured from between my legs all over me, from my eyes to my toes. I felt my teeth bite down on my lip, though only later did I feel any pain. My heart seemed to stop with the intensity of the sensation pulsing through me. I had no idea what was happening, but it came again and again and again, before slowly reducing and finally letting go its grip on me. Suddenly, I felt drained, but immensely calm, and when I opened my eyes I could get back to the test, with a much better frame of mind.

I had just experienced my first orgasm, and I did not even know it for what it was. Only months later, when I had been masturbating regularly for a while, did I think back and recognise it.

And, about that mathematics test? Despite D’Costa, I did fairly well in the end. I was nowhere near the top of the class, but D’Costa couldn’t find anything more to mock and insult me about that day.

So, now, watching Betty’s mouth bob up and down on Harry’s penis, acutely conscious of Dina fingering herself right beside me on the branch, I began squeezing my thighs together. The sensations were a while building, which was quite all right, because I could watch what was going on down by the boat while stimulating myself.

Harry’s hips began to buck faster, and his hands reached up to clutch Betty’s head. Her fingers curled around the base of his penis, and her red-painted lips met her red painted fingernails every time her head came down. But then her hair fell over her face and obscured what she was doing. Not being an actress in a pornographic movie, she didn’t push it back up or angle herself to one side for the camera, so we couldn’t see anything more.

It was only for a moment, though. Getting up from atop Harry, Betty sat on the ground and then lay down on her back as Harry rolled over and on top of her. I could see him rubbing his body on hers, and she thrust her hips, still clad in their tiny shorts, up against him. Her hands clutched his upper arms, and she raised her face to his so they could kiss.

Then Harry sat up, his hands sliding down her sides to her shorts. He fumbled briefly at them, and she raised her hips and then her legs to let him pull them off. As soon as she was completely naked, she spread her legs as wide as she could, and I caught a clear glimpse of her vulva, a pink and brown cleft centred in a nest of pubic hair. Then Harry was down on his chest in the grass between her thighs, his head in the way so I couldn’t actually see his mouth at work on her clit. But I could see how she threw her head back and how the mounds of her bare breasts rose and fell, how her fingers twined in his hair, and how she clasped her legs around his head and pressed her feet on his back. And though I couldn’t hear her, from beside me I could hear the aroused gasping of Dina’s breath and even the soft slurping sound that her fingers made, working in and out of her vagina.

I saw the moment Betty came. Suddenly her body arched like a bow and went rigid. For what must have been ten or fifteen seconds, but felt much longer, she stayed arched, trembling, her head thrown so far back I could only see her chin framed by the erect nubs of her nipples, and then she suddenly went limp. Her fingers slipped from Harry’s hair. Her legs slid down his sides and lay limply on the grass. Only her breasts moved, heaving as she gasped for breath.

I thought it was over, but they had only begun. Harry stayed between her legs for a while, his head turning from side to side as he kissed and licked and nibbled on the insides of her thighs, and then his head returned to the joining of her legs, and as she began to tremble again, I could tell that he had begun licking her clitoris once more. But this time she let him do it only for a minute or two before reaching down, grasping his shoulders, and urging him up over her own body so that once more he lay on top of her. However, this time there were no shorts in the way. His buttocks rubbed and pushed as he worked his pubis against her crotch.

I did not see his penis entering her vagina, though I knew when it happened by how she threw her head back, her mouth open in a sigh, and how his buttocks stopped rubbing from side to side and began to move smoothly back and forth. She raised her legs in the air on either side of his thrusting hips, her feet moving in rhythm to his thrusts. Through the telescope I could even see grains of sand and earth clinging to the soles of her feet, and her clenching red-painted toes, the rings on them glinting in the sun.

Taking a moment away from the two down below, I glanced at Dina. She had worked her shorts almost down to her knees, and her knickers as well. Her telescope was back at her eye, held in her left hand, while the fingers of her right danced and flicked across her vulva. It was fascinating and beautiful and balletic how they pressed and jumped and slipped down her cleft, dipping a moment into her vagina before going back up to touch the nub of her clitoris. I felt the thrill of it in my own vagina, as though it was me she was touching. But I didn’t dare look too long, in case she saw me staring. Almost with reluctance, I turned my gaze back to Betty and Harry.

While I had been looking at Dina, Harry had shifted slightly, raising himself up on his extended arms, so that his torso wasn’t pressed against Betty’s any longer, but his hips even more strongly melded to hers. She had put her hands behind her head and raised it so she could look down the line of his body to where his penis was moving in and out of her vagina. As I watched, she looked up at his face, then down at the joining of their bodies, and then up again. It was an incredibly intimate, beautiful, and erotic, and I might, in fact, would, have been ashamed of myself for watching, but for one thing that happened. What that thing was, I will mention in a moment.

Suddenly Betty lay back, put her feet down flat on the grass, and began to thrust her hips to the rhythm of Harry’s own. Her hands went to his upper arms and shoulders, clutching them as she thrust back at him and began to buck, her entire body shuddering in the throes of orgasm. A moment later he came, too, trembling as he ejaculated into her, and then all of a sudden the strength seemed to go out of him, and he slid down on her and they lay still, breathing and holding and kissing.

My own orgasm struck at that moment. I had not even been conscious of pressing my thighs together, so taken up had I been in what was going on right beside me and also down in the view field of the telescope. I had been so captivated that when my own clitoris finally triggered a crashing orgasm I was taken by surprise; clenching my eyes shut and shuddering, I let go of the anchor branch and fell against Dina. If she hadn’t grabbed hold of me, she later told me, I might have fallen out of the tree. I did drop my telescope, but fortunately it fell between Dina’s legs and into the pouch formed by her lowered shorts, so it wasn’t harmed.

I was, right then, conscious of none of this. I was overwhelmed by orgasm after orgasm striking at me from between my legs, liquid fire pouring from my vagina up into my stomach and down my legs all the way to my toes. My thighs were clamped together of their own volition, their pressure seeming to set off one orgasm before the last one had quite died down. It was like an epileptic fit. I must have come fourteen or fifteen times before it finally wore off and I came back to myself and could open my eyes.

Over the years since then I have had many episodes of multiple orgasms in quick succession, but none like this where I had, basically, one single extremely long orgasm. It has not happened with lovers. I have tried to make it happen with masturbation, too, but never managed to duplicate it. I have come to the conclusion that the reason it happened then was that I had, without knowing it, built up an enormous erotic charge from being so close to Dina for so long, seeing and feeling her breasts when she was trying to teach me to swim, hearing and seeing her masturbate, all without even knowing that I was turned on, and at the same time watching Betty fucking her boyfriend. It had all reached a point where, like snow heaped on a mountain slope until it suddenly slides down in an uncontrollable avalanche, it had been no longer possible to contain it. Since I have never allowed myself to get so sexually pent up since without release, I’ve never had an orgasm like that again. Perhaps it’s just as well.

The first thing I saw was Dina staring anxiously into my face. “Are you all right?” she asked. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Taking a long, shuddering breath, I looked down.

“They’ve gone,” Dina told me, misinterpreting what I was looking at. “Probably back to the house, to fuck again.” I did glimpse Betty and Harry – still naked, their clothes draped over his arm – walking off through the grass, but I was actually looking to see if Dina’s sex was still bare. Probably fortunately, she had pulled her panties up, or I might have leant over to get a closer look and fallen out of the tree.

Eventually, after giving Betty and Harry time to get well away, we climbed down and went for a swim in the lake. By that I mean Dina went swimming while I lay down in the shallows, letting the water splash over my body until I cooled off and my heart had stopped hammering. Much later, we went back to the house, where Betty, in a light flowery summer dress, greeted us with an angelic smile. “Had a good day, did you?”

We assured her that we had.

This was not the only sexual adventure I had with Dina, but I am mentioning it particularly because it brings me back to the point where I began this account: at which point does pornography stop being exploitative and become enabling? I believe that point is where the participants show themselves having sex of their own free will, knowing that they are being seen, and happy with it. If Betty and Harry had not wanted to be seen, what Dina and I had done would have been wrong and intrusive. But they had wanted to be seen, by coming to the lake to have sex, when they could as easily have made love entirely in the house, in her room where we could not have seen them.

How do I know that they’d been putting on a show for us? Well, in the first place, as Dina had said, Betty had told us where they’d be, and there was no reason to do that unless she’d wanted us to watch. And the second thing was what I’d seen through the telescope as Betty had been alternating between gazing up at Harry’s face and down where his penis had been sliding in and out of her vagina.

For an instant, she’d looked past him and right up at the tree where we were sitting, as though she knew exactly where we would be. And – though this just possibly might only have been because of the sun shining in her eyes – I am convinced that at that moment, she winked right at me.

*************************************************************

So this has been the next episode of the amorous adventures of Juliana L. Thanks for reading and let me know what you think. More to come, assuming you’re interested. Revisiting these memories has been fun.

---